Category Archives: Leadership

The 4+1 Day Work Week: A Framework for Growth and Collaboration

This is for my friends and colleagues who missed CANHEIT this year and wanted to hear my talk.

Professional growth in higher education IT often takes a backseat to the daily demands of our roles. Yet, as education, technology, and our profession evolve, so must we. How can IT professionals expand their skills, follow their interests, broaden their expertise, build institutional relationships, and stay motivated—all while continuing to deliver value to their institutions?

The 4+1 Day Work Week is a model that challenges the status quo. Four days a week, I have the privilege of being the Director of IT for the Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen’s University. One day a week, I step into an entirely different cybersecurity-focused role within our central Information Security Office. This arrangement is more than just a schedule change; it’s a deliberate effort to foster collaboration, gain institutional perspective, and contribute knowledge across departments. It’s an investment in both professional development and institutional strength.

This talk explores my experiences so far with this approach—the impact of working across silos, the logistical and cultural adjustments required, and the unexpected ways it fuels professional engagement. More importantly, I believe it provides a framework that others can adapt. Whether through structured secondments, job-shadowing, or collaborative initiatives, IT professionals can take steps to break routine, build connections, and enhance both their careers and their institutions.

What could this look like for you? By rethinking traditional work structures, we can create opportunities that not only make us better IT professionals but also strengthen the institutions we serve.

Lessons Learned Building a Consortium

Building Together: Part Two

Part one of my “Building Together” series, Ingredients for Successful Collaboration, covered the origin story of the Elentra Consortium, an international open-source (turned community-source) software consortium in Canada, the United States, and Singapore. I also defined what I believe are the key ingredients that made our collaboration successful in the first place. If you have not yet read part one, I recommend starting there.

In part two, I will cover the lessons we learned while building and operating our consortium for over a decade. Some of these lessons we got perfectly correct from the start, others we had to learn the hard way.

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Ingredients for Successful Collaboration

Building Together: Part One

Last year, my friend and colleague Zhen Gu and I gave a well-received presentation at the AAMC IT in Academic Medicine conference in Washington, DC, called “Building Together: Lessons Learned Building a Consortium.” Creating this talk was fun but challenging, as it forced me to distill a tremendous amount of experience gained over fifteen years building an international open-source (turned community-source) software consortium. After presenting our talk again in the fall at the Elentra Engage conference in Pasadena, California, I felt that our important work would translate beautifully into an article for my website.

In this two-part series, I will share some incredible lessons learned while building our consortium alongside 20+ universities. I will provide my unique perspective on the most significant opportunities and challenges of working together, the importance and power of building community, the balance of governance, and the ingredients we believe are necessary to collaborate successfully.

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